Top 10 favorite games

Everybody needs games, because if people don’t play, then people get mad, bored, and then start to do bad stuff, and like a saying says “ Ocius is the mother of all sins.”. This list is about my favorite top 10 games, and includes both video games, and board games.Dear reader, if your parents have told you that video games are bad for you or they are going to cook your brain, or stuff like that, I can say with all the freedom of the world that such arguments ARE BULLSHIT!. There is no scientific evidence that proves this, in fact science demonstrates the opposite, for example it has been demonstrated that video games improve brain capacities, besides, video games are a form of art because it tells you stories in the game, they have a plot and you need actor to play the voices in the game. Position 1 is my Favorite game.

10.- Chess

Classic game, for people who actually are clever, and one of the few sports that heavy and unfit people can play. The game itself is epic because it recreates a battle between two armies. It is so epic that once during the cold war, an American player, and a Soviet Player were playing the final match in a chess world cup. the American won.

9.- Risk

Like chess, but the difference is that the board is a world map. It was based on the Napoleonic era, so the game figures look like soldiers from 1800’s.  The objective of the game is to lead your armies and become the next Napoleon (not Napoleon Dynamite) and conquer the world. Easy, right?

8.- Uno

The classic card game (for non-gamblers) to play after a semester exam in class, and also to break up friendships as well. You have 7 cards and you have to get rid of all of them first, but if you have one left you have to say “Uno” or you have to grab seven more.

Friends? That is the last thing you have when you play Uno...

7.-Mario Kart DS

Mario -who has decided to stop looking for the d̶u̶m̶b̶ Princess Peach who has been kidnapped by Bowser more times than Liam Neeson's daughter in the Taken franchise- now plays karts race. In this game, you drive a kart and like in all race games, you have to make it first to the goal to win, but is not that easy, because the other players are such an <insert rated R word here> , and they will throw at you bananas, turtle shells, lightings, ink, bullets, and other stuff to win the race in a u̶n̶honorable way. Dear reader, if you choose to play Mario Kart DS (start playing Mario Kart version for DS or newer, the older version’s graphics are crap), choose Yoshi, he is the most complete racer.

6.- Scrabble

Always that I play scrabble, I play it in Spanish because it is the only version that I have. In scrabble you grab seven letter from a bag and try to form words, and according to the letter you use you get points, and the winner is the one who has more points, you can form any word you want, but unspoken rules t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶n̶ say that “Thou shall not use the f-word, s-word, a-word, p-word, c-word, d-word”, and the rules of the game say that you cannot form Proper names such Alejandro, Microsoft, Mcallen, etc. You get the idea.

5.- Clue

The game in which you play to be Sherlock. You have to solve a murder case about who killed a millionaire and with what weapon where. I have The Simpsons version, so you have to find who killed Mr.Burns and with what weapon (poisoned doughnut, Saxophone, etc). Like chess, and most games from Parker Brothers, this game is so epic and you will have a great time with it.

Oh my Gosh! I need that version of clue! Imagine Dwight K. Shrute looking for the murderer of Toby Flenderson. That is what I call creativity.

6. Conker's Bad Fur Day

A video game for Nintendo 64 and Xbox. It is about a red squirrel named Conker who tries to find his way to his home with his girlfriend after a night at the bar, but gets lost and gets into many ordeals to save his life and find his way back to home, like in a greek epic, but also like in a greek epic, it has a lot of gore and dark humor, so it is rated M for Mature audiences, and kids should not play it b̶u̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶n̶e̶s̶t̶,̶ ̶t̶o̶d̶a̶y̶'̶s̶ ̶k̶i̶d̶s̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶n̶a̶p̶r̶o̶p̶i̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶n̶a̶p̶r̶o̶p̶i̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶v̶i̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶i̶n̶n̶a̶p̶r̶o̶p̶i̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶e̶s̶?̶.

5.- Mario Party (Nintendo 64)

Another mario game. A kind of board game in which if you win minigames you advance in the board, and you win if you collect so many stars. Enjoyable, although like in Mario Kart, the opponent will do anything possible to win, even if it means to steal your stars, have you eaten by Bowser, roll over you by a train, etc. Make sure to play Mario Party 3 or newer, older versions are bad.

Look at them, trying to save their lives from falling in the lava by running on the top of balls. Like SAW, but for children.

3.- Frontline Commando D-day

Dear reader, if you are a history fan like me, and admire Captain America, then you will love this game. This games is a mobile game in which you are an American Soldier during World War II, and your first battle is in Normandy in the D-day. Your mission is to advance in France and defeat the Nazis as you advance. Exciting!

2.- Monopoly

The most popular game from Parker Brother which is the most effective weapon to destroy friendships and families since the Great Depression. The game is about how fast can you be the next Bill Gates or the next Prince of Saudi Arabia, and is by buying properties, railroads, services, and by putting hotels and houses on your properties, so when your rival falls in your property he can go to bankrupt. A fun game (to my taste) which also teaches you a lesson: do your taxes, and if you want to be billionaire you have to become a douche (like Macbeth).

Mr. Uncle Pennybags, who some speculate that is based on J.P. Morgan, who is properly rocking the Monopoly mustache.

1.- Minecraft

Without any doubt, Minecraft has well deserved the position number 1. It is the most exciting, epic, and entertaining game that I have never seen. The reason on why I love Minecraft is because I like scouting outdoors and exploring my surroundings like an explorer, and whenever I do that I feel like a Spanish (or should I say Mexican) Conquistador or like Eric the Red when he arrived to Vinland (North America). Unfortunately, because of a̶n̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶v̶e̶n̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ homework ,I don’t have the time to do these things so I stay at home, but with Minecraft I can explore forests, deserts, oceans, caves, mines, mountains, and a lot of biomes and you can even build your own buildings and make a city with your own hands brick by brick, raise cattle, breed cattle, domesticate wolves, build railroads, make bombs and make them blow and nobody gets hurt(if that is your thing) and start your own hormone-free organic farm. 
There there is also survival mode in which you have to make an intelligent use of your resources, and survive in your little world(is not that little, in fact it is infinite in the PC and Xbox versions) against zombie attacks, skeleton archers, creepers (which are some sort of plant with legs according to science) that explode, Endermen (A version of Slenderman), bad wolves, and zombie pigmen (Biped zombies with humanoid body and pig head). Minecraft is also educational, because it teaches you about using your resources wisely and not to waste it, making out of you a better person for the planet, plus I remember that one day, I had to take the AP Environmental Science, and I had a question that asked about the layers of the ground, so I remembered from Minecraft that on the top most part of the soill is dirt, then solidified sand, and then the bedrock. There was another question about about how to get minerals out from the ore (such gold from gold ore), and I remembered that in Minecraft I have to clean the ore by heating it, so I put it as an aswer and I got a three on the AP (which is good). Also some people especulate that Minecraft also helps you to improve your SAT scores, but there is no proof yet. Also there are some codes called mods that you can install in the program and you can do an infinity of possibilities such mine Uranium, install electricity in your buildings, build a ship, launch nukes, have a shotgun, etc. I love this game because you can many things that are dangerous for people, but the beauty is that nobody gets hurt (like in The Simpson's episode in which Homer creates an alternative universe in which everything is made of legos, and "nobody gets hurt", according to Ned Flanders).

A nuke in TNTs

Ship built by me.

King Tando’s palace in the capital city of Trolledo, in the Tandolish Kingdom. I built the palace, Trolledo’s buildings and the Tandolish Kingdom by myself brick by brick. The part that is on the very top of the palace is a pool, and the water that runs from below the palace is a waterfall.

Third cultural event

I was assigned to write once again about a cultural event, and initially I was going to write it about a math competition, but I had to drop the team in which I was going to the competition because I had things to do on the day of the competition, so I decided to write about my experience in a museum. Now I know that I already wrote about a museum in the first entry about the cultural event, but this entry is different because in order to get to this museum I had to get off of the school bus in Hidalgo on Friday February 27th, then I had to walk 1.4 miles (around 30 minutes walking ) to the southwest, and cross a river in order to get to foreign lands. Yes, the museum is in the far away lands of Mexico. I was sure that the city of Reynosa is more than drug dealers, soldiers in the streets carrying their loaded guns on the top of trucks, and cheap healthcare.

So after crossing the border, I went to the house of my parents to spend the weekend in order to go to the museum on Saturday. Saturday came, and my dad and me went  to the museum which is almost outside the city. Like always happens when I go to a cultural event, it was cloudy, rainy and during a cold front.

The name of the museum that I went was Casa de la tierra (which means Earth’s house). It was completed last January, and is funded by the state government. The mission of Casa de la Tierra is to educate the people about global warming, climate change, and pollution. I entered to the building and a girl (not a lady, she was like 20) greeted us and informed us that the next tour was going to start at midday, but we could interact with two computers that were in there. The museum was smaller than the one in mcallen, and although I already knew most of the information on it, it still amazed me the information that I didn’t knew. The computers that we went sent to interact with were two spheric screens in which the earth was projected, and by a touch screen panel, you could project the image that you wanted to see. For example, you could see the Earth at night, forest fires around the globe, changes of Ice around the world, frequency of lightings, etc. There was also an option in which you could project Mars, the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons), the sun, solar radiation as seen by the satellite SOHO, and the planets compared with the solar surface. At twelve, the guide tooks us for a tour around the museum, which consisted in an spiral stars what went up. As we walked throughout the stars, at the wall in my right there was a time line about the creation of the universe which started with a thought that said in Spanish: “In the stelar ovens were created most of the atoms of the chemical elements that gave origin to all the matter we know, including the living beings. The calcium of our bones, the iron of our blood, the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen of our cells of our body, they are product of the nuclear reactions of the stars. Like the famous astronomer Carl Sagan said ‘We are all Stardust’”.

After this thought, our journey thru the history of the universe started with the Big Bang, an explosion that lasted around three minutes and created all the elements, and the different forces, such the gravity force, and the nuclear force. Moreover, We learned about the years light unit (the unit to measure distances in the universe that mean the time that light would take to go over a distance. 1 year light means that light takes a year to go over a distance). We also learned about the Relativity theory, and the theories of what is going to happen with the universe. The first one is The Big Crush, which says that the universe will get to its greatest expansion, and then it is going to shrink to a small point; then there is The Big Rip, that says that the universe will continue to expand and all the particles will eventually disintegrate as a result of the expansion,and finally, the theory that says that nothing will happen, but the universe will continue to expand forever. After this timeline, it was followed a timeline of the earth, that started with the earth as a big red ball at its very beginnings, then the species were created in a flood starting by the cyanobacteria, those bacterias were becoming more complex, until they became dinosaurs, who then were killed by an asteroid, and then mammals survived, then some monkey appeared in earth and evolved until they became humans, who then founded cities that started to pollute the world. After we finished the timeline, the college girl guide took us to a dome in the very top of the building which was some sort of cinema, but this cinema had the screen shaped in a sphere, actually it was the same thing as the one that I saw in the museum in Mcallen. She went away and another guide came in to put us projection in the globe, and to talk as the images appeared. I remember that he asked “How many penguins can a polar bear eat?” my father said two, but I knew to what the guide was going to. So I said “Well, if you give them to the bear it sure is two, but a polar bear cannot eat any penguins since they both live in the opposite poles of the earth” and then my dad said “Well, but it might happen in a congressman’s zoo” making reference to a note on the news on friday that said that a private zoo was confiscated from a Mexican congressman in the Federal government, so we all laugh from this satire. Then the guide put us a video about what would the earth say to us if she had a voice, how we (humans) are destroying her. After this video finished, the tour did. I went home with several mementos to put in here.

Now, reflecting about what happened in the museum, I wonder what if that museum was built in the US. I can imagine conservatives going not to learn, but t̶o̶ ̶b̶u̶r̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶ to protest. I really like that museum, because among all the science museums that I have visited, I have never been in one that explained so well the global warming issue. Projects like this make the people to become educated about their surroundings, and create conscience. Also it touches the evolution and the continental drift theory, which are the best proved explanations on how the world works, and although in Mexico there are not as much people that believe in Creationism (the only mexican creationists that I can think of are SOME priests, church officers, catholic schools, and politicians from the PAN (Mexican f̶a̶s̶c̶i̶s̶t̶ conservative political party (the Mexican GOP, although the Mexican GOP are the PRI and PAN together))). It still opens the minds of those who are not educated in the sciences. And like one of the best Popes that the Church has had, Pope Francis, I also support the Evolution because it doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but it proves that God exists because God is not a wizard who made everything like if it was witchcraft, but took its time making everything better (the Pope said something that looked like this).

 The Earth. Version 2.0.

Cultural Event

As a cultural event, I went to the IMAS (International Museum of Art and Sciences) at Mcallen. This museum is affiliated with the Smithsionan insititute and there are exhibitions (As the name says) about art and sciences. When I went to the museum, the first thing I saw were a lot of rocks, crystals and quartzes from the valley, but the most impressive thing of all is that in that exhibition they had two meteorites that were found in Russia and brought to the US as a gift. On other exhibition, there was a documentary about the solar system being projected in a screen that had a spherical shape, it was pretty cool because on the screen there would project images of the planets and it gave an impression that it was an actual plane. Then there was a piece of petrified wood that was more than 1000 years old, this type of wood is said to fossil and was buried in the ground for many millions of years, due to this process the wood’s density increases and some woods can weigh as much as a ton.

Lastly there was an exhibition of inedit portraits of people made by Picasso, this was an exclusive collection of the IMAS and although they don’t look exactly as a portrait, Picasso’s objective was not to be paint accurately the paintings but to reflect how the people looked to him (Picasso) and to paint a satire of this impression.